Ultrabooks are about to get even better. PC makers are constantly trying to find new ways to shave weight and thickness off their ultra-portables. This year we've already seen some significant advances made with the release of Intel's Haswell processors which resulted in some impressively thin new ultrabooks (Sony Vaio Pro). With the release of the XP941 solid state drives, Samsung may well have made the next leap forward.

The XP941 line use a PCIe 2.0 interface to offer a huge improvement in performance over standard SATA connection SSDs, with data transmission speeds up to 2.5 times higher. The new drives are capable of reading an impressive 1400 MB/s or 100 HD movies in only six minutes.

Almost more significant though is the reduction in size and weight. The new memory solutions measure only 80 x 22 millimeters (3.15 x 0.87 inches) and weigh only 6 grams or 0.2 ounces (about the same size and twice the weight of a stick of gum). This is an amazing improvement over 54 gram (1.9 ounce) 2.5 inch SATA SSDs and one that will free up valuable space and weight.

The South Korean company have announced that they have begun mass-production of the new XP941s. The new line includes 512, 256 and 128 GB models.